


City of Peace

by Remeinhu



Series: These Fragile Bodies [7]
Category: Six - Marlow/Moss
Genre: Angst and Fluff and Smut, Biting, Consensual Sex, F/F, Parrleyn - Freeform, Porn With Plot, Scratching, Shameless Smut, parrlyn
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-06-24
Updated: 2020-06-24
Packaged: 2021-03-04 02:49:19
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,079
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24886366
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Remeinhu/pseuds/Remeinhu
Summary: A smutty outtake from the end of chapter 6 of “Queenly Masks."
Relationships: Anne Boleyn/Catherine Parr
Series: These Fragile Bodies [7]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1800094
Comments: 9
Kudos: 48





	City of Peace

**Author's Note:**

> Having read "Queenly Masks" is probably helpful if you want Cathy's inner monologue and the use of Song of Songs to make sense here. 
> 
> Otherwise, you are perfectly free to ignore the author's need to over-intellectualize her smut.

_“We have a little sister, and she has no breasts._

_What shall we do for our sister on the day she’s spoken for?_

_If she is a wall, we will build a silver turret upon her_

_If she is a door, we will bolt her with beams of cedarwood.”_

[Editorial gloss: Bitch, _please_ —]

_“I_ am _a wall, and my breasts are towers._

_But for my lover I am a city of peace.”_

_-_ Song of Songs 8:8-9

“I believe you because of _you,_ Catherine, _”_ Anne said, as they sat in each other’s arms, processing Cathy’s autism evaluation, which had concluded in infuriating ambiguity thanks to a chirpy, infantilizing evaluator who hadn’t been able to see that Cathy’s instinctive masking was exhausting rather than hopeful. “But just in case you were worried you were being selfish—I also believe you because believing you helps me.”

Cathy kissed Anne as hard as she could, so much so she thought she could taste a little blood. “What on earth did I do to deserve you?”

“I ask myself the same question every day.” Anne stroked her cheek.

“Is it utterly wrong that I want you badly right now?”

“I have no idea if it’s wrong or not, but I’m not saying no.”

“I think,” Cathy mused, “that after being so guarded with the evaluator, I need to let myself go and be exposed. You know every inch of me. Show me that.”

Anne kissed her, matching her earlier intensity as she slid her thigh between Cathy’s legs. “Forward, aren’t we?” Cathy quipped, out of habit, as she tried to relax into Anne’s touch, but the line felt dissonant—after all, Anne was doing what she’d just asked her to do—and she tensed, frustrated with herself for being unable to come up with the right words for the second time that day.

“Cath. Are you sure you want to do this right now?”

“Yes, dammit!” And she did, she really did. After the ordeal of her day, and the exhaustion of holding up a mask she couldn’t manage to take down no matter how she tried, she actually wanted nothing more than for Anne to peel her back to bare skin and quivering flesh, to press her past the point of logic so she could lose herself in washes of sensation and slicks of fluid, in involuntary spasms and ridiculously twisted facial expressions, in sharp whimpers and guttural moans.

“I want you,” she said. “I want you to pull me apart. I just can’t seem to let go of the pose I’ve been holding all day, so I can allow you in. Or maybe it won’t let go of me. I…”

Anne had placed a finger over her lips. “I think I understand.” She parted Cathy’s lips with that finger, sliding the tip just inside. “You’ve been explaining and trying to reason all day, and you need a rest from it. Starting now, unless something’s wrong, I don’t want you to speak. You have nothing to convince me of. All right?”

Something began to release inside Cathy’s chest, and she nodded, gasping slightly at the slow ribbons of heat Anne’s finger sent rolling down her collarbone from the corners of her mouth.

“Good. Do you think you can stand for a little bit?” Cathy considered the question. She still felt a bit wobbly, but she wanted Anne to have access to all of her at once, so after a moment she nodded again.

Anne lifted her shoulders until she was sitting up, guiding her to the center of the room after she swung her legs over the side of the bed and positioning her so she was bathed in the soft amber light of her floor lamp. Cathy felt Anne kneel behind her and slide her hands under her loose t-shirt, snaking them around to cup her breasts. Anne took the shirt’s hem in her teeth and raised it along with her as she stood up, slowly. She guided Cathy’s arms over her head and pulled her shirt away, tossing it softly aside. She must have quickly shimmied out of her own nightgown and underpants, for when she pressed up against Cathy’s back Cathy felt no cloth—only soft hair and softer skin, and then wet lips and teeth nibbling at her neck, delicately at first, and then nipping sharply at the juncture of her neck and shoulder, causing her to cry out. Anne’s hands girdled her waist and slid down her hips and under the waistband of her underpants, pausing to knead her buttocks— _“I know I said no talking, but you really have an_ amazing _ass,” Anne whispered—_ as she eased them to the floor.

As Anne’s hands pressed firmly along her body, Cathy imagined they were peeling off her outer skin, rigid and itching, as though she were a snake. She stepped free of her underpants, and turned around in Anne’s arms to face her, cupping her face in her hands and kissing her deeply as she pulled their bodies together, needing desperately to feel all of her at once.

“ _Open me,”_ she breathed, _sotto voce,_ before Anne softly stopped her words once more. She lipped at Anne’s fingers, but they were gone before she could fully take them into her mouth. Then she felt her arms under her thighs, lifting, and she hopped up to grip Anne’s waist with her legs as Anne propelled them both towards the bed.

She collapsed backward, curls spread out behind her, and Anne fell between her legs. She reached up and twined her fingers into Anne’s hair, gasping at the sensation of her own wetness against Anne’s soft belly. Firm hands pressed her shoulders down into the mattress before moving down to grasp her breasts almost roughly, and she bit at Anne’s shoulder, whimpering with hunger for her body.

She felt as though she were made of _want,_ felt the mental walls and bolts that seemed so immovable earlier in the day shudder and fall apart at the joints, felt herself coming un-twisted and undone. She wanted to feel all of Anne at once, to gather her into herself and drink her down like wine, and she grasped frantically at her hair, her shoulders, her back and buttocks.

Anne echoed her urgency. They’d started out gently, but now they were grinding feverishly against each other, working each other into a frenzy. As her walls continued to crash down and splinter, Cathy could feel some of the anger she’d tamped down earlier in the day bubble up in her veins.

It frightened her, but she couldn’t banish it for fear of locking up again.

The image of the woman who had evaluated her and dismissed her as “doing so well, dearie!” flashed before her, unbidden, and she felt something in her come so near to snapping.

The verse from Canticles—" _We have a little sister, and she has no breasts_. _What shall_ _we do for her on the day she’s spoken for?”_ —swam through her consciousness.

_What, indeed? Nobody speaks for me!_ Her breasts felt almost painfully firm under Anne’s weight.

_“If she is a wall, we will build a silver turret upon her. If she is a door, we will bolt her with beams of cedarwood”_

_No! No more encasements! No more façades!_

  
  
She held the image of the evaluator in her mind. _Little? Dearie?_

_Fuck. off._

She wanted to scream, to kick, to scratch—but the woman wasn’t here. Instead there was Anne, Anne who loved her and held her and believed her, and whom she didn’t want to hurt.

She _needed_ to lash out, though. She felt Anne soften a moment, inquiringly, and she knew then that she felt the tension and anger building in her.

She gripped Anne’s shoulders and pressed in just slightly with her nails, catching her eye with a silent question. Anne hesitated for the merest instant before nodding, and Cathy snarled and dug down hard, raking her nails down Anne’s back and leaving angry red lines in her wake, pouring her anger into the scratches as she felt Anne writhe under her hands and heard her yelp in spite of herself.

_Bitch,_ please.

She felt herself swelling and bursting out of her old, stiff skin.

_I_ am _a wall, and my breasts are towers._

Anne growled, voice humid with pain and lust, and reached between Cathy’s legs, grasping her cunt possessively.

She was _dripping._ She dug harder into Anne’s shoulders, actually drawing blood. “ _Take me,”_ she mouthed, reaching one of her own hands down to relieve her aching clit. Anne started to say “what did I tell you?” but she knew the rule she’d set had been thrown out the window. Cathy felt two, then three fingers thrust into her, and she clenched her pelvic floor around them desperately and bit at the flesh above Anne’s left breast, leaving a mark. She could feel Anne’s own wetness bearing down on her thigh, could feel her rubbing her own clit with one hand as she fucked her almost savagely with the other, could hear their breaths coming fast and ragged, and she half-moaned, half-sobbed when, inside her, Anne’s fingers curled and found her g-spot.

Her mask was long cast off and torn to pieces, its carefully forged silver ornaments crushed into shards. The stiff wooden bolts that had held her back that morning were battered to splinters. Her skin felt newly shed, yielding and exposed, and as the wave of her orgasm broke deep in her core and crashed through her body her very nerves seemed electrified and open to the air.  
  
She was _undone._

She screamed, trailing into a whimper, and collapsed, gasping and quivering, feeling an almost unbearable ache of absence when Anne withdrew from her.

She caught her breath, and realized after a long moment that she was still _hungry._ She looked at Anne, still flushed and wet, lips parted and eyes dark with want, and she _had_ to have her.  
  


She reached out to touch Anne’s shoulder, which now bore several inflamed scratch marks. She pressed down, softly at first in another silent question and then, when she felt Anne yield in response, she pushed her down hard onto her back, sucking and biting lightly at a nipple and reaching down to slide her fingers back and forth across her slick labiae, teasing, pressing as if to enter her but never quite following through.

“Cathy, _please,”_ Anne gasped huskily, and Cathy sank two fingers into her, diving down to take her swollen clit into her mouth as she did so.

Anne tasted musky and slightly tart, and she felt hot and smooth around Cathy’s fingers. Her inner thighs were slippery with sweat and spit and her own wetness.

It was glorious.

She ran her tongue firmly down the stiff flesh again and again, thrusting her fingers until she felt Anne clench and convulse around her and heard a nearly primal wail escape her throat. She rode the crest of the orgasm with Anne until she shuddered and went limp.

She eased out of Anne, the adrenaline slowly draining from her until she could register her own satiation, and she crawled up into her lover’s arms, breathing into her tight embrace.

“We should really get up and pee,” Anne murmured after a while. “Urinary tract infections aren’t going to make life any more fun for either of us.”

“I know. We should also put something on your shoulders, or they’ll get infected and you’ll be even more tempted to pick them. But can you hold me here for just a few more minutes?” In response, Anne pulled her in closer, and she let her eyes drift and close, let her limbs droop, and let her hands flutter gently against Anne’s shoulders, which she had raked with her nails only minutes before.

And despite the cruel blows of the day, despite knowing that it would take weeks to overcome the damage she’d taken to her sense of self—for these moments, she knew fully who she was, knew the truth of her own self-accounting.

Her doors were unbolted; her walls were down.

_Bitch_ , please _._

_I_ am _a wall, and my breasts are towers._

She felt Anne’s chest rise and fall, deeply, calmly, beneath her cheek.

_But for my lover I am—and she is to me—a city of peace._

And for those moments, she dwelt in that city, and there was nothing else.

**Author's Note:**

> The translation of the passage from Song of Songs I quote here is mainly from Ariel Bloch and Chana Bloch's 1998 "Song of Songs: A New Translation with an Introduction and Commentary," with the exception of the second line, "What shall we do for our sister on the day she’s spoken for?" (which I modified slightly from the New JPS translation), and the “Bitch, please,” (which is obviously my own commentary). 
> 
> The verse numbers also correspond to what you will find in a Jewish Tanakh rather than in a Christian Bible (in which verses 8 and 9 will be 9 and 10, respectively).
> 
> Why, the reader who cares about this sort of thing in their smut might ask, does the very Protestant Cathy have a deeply Jewish translation running through her head? 
> 
> A. Because she keeps up to date in Biblical studies, and the Bloch translation is noteworthy.
> 
> B. Because the Bloch translation of the Song of Songs is sexier and more poetic than that of the Wycliffe or Coverdale Bibles (what would have been available in English in the first half of the 16th c., although Cathy probably would have primarily read the Vulgate, in Latin, which I do not read), and IMO more aesthetically pleasing than the King James, New Revised Standard, or New International Versions, and,
> 
> C. Because bite me, that’s why.


End file.
